My Little Pony LVII: You Must Construct Additional Pinkies!

[Trixie]

I would think they were mainly defeated/excluded for plot reasons; the few other times they have been present they have always come across as being both quick to react and highly disciplined (in the parts I remember, I'm sure someone can come up with evidence to the contrary).

Well, they lost pretty much immediately to Nightmare Moon too but you can't really fault them for that, still, they needed to be ordered by civilian to actually act.

I don't think mostly robot super hackers count as "normal".

You mean, tetraplegic orphans with not-that-great (for the setting, at least) prosthetics aren't normal?